Initiation

The acceptance of young adults as fully fledged tribal members, whether sophisticated or primitive, follow more or less the same pattern. Anyone who has ever been inducted into a college fraternity will recognize the ritual common to all initiation ceremonies—in the course of the initiation, things happen. Most of them are unpleasant, usually involving some method of branding or otherwise marking the initiate in order that he or she will ever afterward be instantly recognizable to their fellows. Primitive stuff, but it serves the purpose. The ceremony, naturally, is followed by the sharing of a meal—the easiest, quickest way to declare blood-brotherhood. Whether the menu is freshly slaughtered antelope washed down with fermented cassava juice under a banyan tree, or roast beef and Beaujolais in a smart city watering-hole, the purpose is the same. Although the warrior morans of the plains of Africa and the young bloods of the Western university campus do not, by any means, share the same lifestyle, they all have the same idea—the formation of a bond that ensures the support of the peer group at the most important time of their lives.